burning Christmas calories

Micah doing his Vince Carter impression, and Becky concentrating a little too hard on the catch.

Jared was showing us the crocodile technique, when catching a frisbee.

pics soon to arrive

In case you didn't know, my life has been rather monotonous the last few months, plugging away on our house-nothing too exciting to share. However, I will have some great pictures to show soon. The master bath is almost completed, will be done next week. The kitchen will be done next week as well, including cabinets installed. The texturing will be done in the remainder of the house in the next couple weeks, then the rest of the painting will commence.

The floors have been refinished, but then promptly covered to protect against getting messed up while we paint and texture. I didn't want to do the floors so soon, but had difficulty finding a flooring guy to work in my schedule and the cabinets needed to be installed after floors finished, so there wasn't any screwups or major cleanup afterwards.

GOOD NEWS: we got our hiking and camping permits to the Na'Pali coast on Kaui. We will be going with a couple friends in February along the coveted hiking trail most backpackers, consider the Mecca of all hiking trails. Looking at the pictures and reading about it, makes me believe it. We will get to see where they filmed Jurasic Park. That will be cool.

Peru trip

I am almost done posting pages to my vacation website on Peru. This is kinda geared towards outsiders, but is written from a point of view that explains the sites and cool things to see in Peru along with some pictures that we took while on our vacation. If you got to check out my site: http://www.family-vacation-getaway-destinations.com/peru-family-vacation.html , then be sure to click on some of the google ads or click on the Expedia link and buy any airline tickets you need for your next trip. I get paid a small commission for each of these. I know, I am unabashedly asking for your support!

The site is geared towards families traveling with kids, and I know, we don't have kids, but we were kids once and can speak upon a little authority. The advice we give still stands tried and true and that is what counts, right?

Crikey!

The crazy Croc hunter has finally met his match. For those of you who enjoyed watching the Crocodile hunter while taking a study break -like me- you will be sad to know that the fearless hunter met his match while doing a film on dangerous sea animals off the coast of Australia.

Steve Irwin was swimming above a 220 pound stingray, when the fish got scared and shot it's 8 inch stinger directly into the Croc hunter's heart. Steve had just enough time to pull it out, then he died a couple moments later.

Steve was a never ending source of entertainment for me during my college days. I especially enjoyed seeing him jump out of his moving Land Cruiser, shouting "Look, snake!" and go tearing off after one the most deadly snakes in the world.

Crikey! Steve will be missed.

Troy discovered

For those of you who are history majors or interested in history in general. I just got done reading a fascinating book that details overwhelming evidence that the lost city of Troy was in fact located in Cambridge, England. The name of the author is Iman Wilkens and he wrote "Where Troy once stood." It was re-released in 2005 with an updated 12 years of research in it. He has spent over 30 years studying and in my opinion, giving overwhelming evidence that Troy never existed in Turkey. He has found battlements and evidence that fit Homer's description of Troy to the tee, along with tons of bronze weaponry-the type of metal used for fighting during the Troy era. It is pretty fascinating stuff. He also concludes that Homer was most likely a Celt and his writings just became adopted by the Greeks who assimiliated the Celts into their culture as the Celts migrated south.

Another point that is made by Wilkens is that the war was not fought over Helen, but rather over the fact that southern England had massive reserves of tin which had recently been discovered could be used to make bronze, a far superior metal to that of which they currently had. Following that theory, Wilkens and others, now believe that the people who battled the Achaians of Troy may have been a mixture of Norsemen and many other tribes who wanted a piece of the action and get bronze weapons.

The fanciest theory that Wilkens puts forth is that the Odyssey journey by Odysseus was a journey that took him across the Atlantic and into the Caribbean, where there have been islands found that meet the descriptions of those in the Odyssey. For instance, Cuba is thought to be the birthplace of the Greek gods Apollon and Artemis.

Truly fascinating stuff, if you would like to read a review, you can follow this link: http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/where-troy-once-stood/where-troy-once-stood.htm or you can follow this link to a lecture put forth by a professor on the subject of the book at this link: http://www.troy-in-england.co.uk/trojan-kings-of-england/trojan-kings-of-england.htm

koren, why you break my heart?

It is with a heavy heart, that I write this sad bit of news. Last night, Koren Robinson, the #1 receiver and recent $15 million dollar contract signing of the Minnesota Vikings was arrested for drunk driving and speeding.

Add this to the growing list of miscreants the Vikings have had to deal with on their rosters. Can't help but wonder where the Vikings season will go now. Being a Vikings fan is one of the hardest things to stay loyal to! My heart is breaking....

the beautiful city of arequipa

We really wish we had more time to spend in Arequepa, it is a really beautiful city and full of spanish style buildings and churches.

we saw condors!

While spending a couple days in the Colca Canyon (the deepest canyon in the world) we got to see a total of 7 condors. The birds are incredibly ugly, but amazingly magnificent to watch fly. They can have a wing span of 3.2 meters or 11 feet and weigh up to 14 kilos or around 30 pounds. This was a lot of fun to see and experience. We felt blessed to get to see a sight that very few people ever get to see!

steripen

Thank you to Isaac for telling me about the steripen. We used our steripen daily while in Peru and never got sick. I am a big fan and highly recommend that any of you who hike where the water is bad should consider getting one. We spent a few minutes every night filling up our nalgene bottles and preparing for the next day.

You can find out more about it at the steripen website, which is at http://www.steripen.com or find it on http://www.rei.com under camping/hiking and then under water treatment or you can follow this long link: http://www.rei.com/online/store/ProductDisplay?storeId=8000&catalogId=40000008000&productId=47847993&parent_category_rn=4500462&vcat=REI_SSHP_CAMPING_TOC

Lake Titicaca

On Lake Titicaca, we spent a night with a local family on Amantani Island. They fed us really great food including some potatoes that looked like grubs, but tasted really good, something like a mix between an onion, potatoe and asparagus.

wowee the macaw

Somehow this picture downloaded twice. But this is Wowee the local macaw that came around to be fed. He was quite large standing about 18 inches from head to tail.

Tambopata reserve

These pictures were taken while in the Tambopata reserve (part of the amazon jungle). I really felt like I was on vacation here. It was really relaxing and as you can see we saw a lot wildlife here. One night we went out caiman searching and found several and the next night a guide found a rainbow boa.

incan stone work

If you haven´t seen Incan stone work before, you can´t really understand the beauty of their work. These stones are massive and they cut them down to the milimeter and make each stone fit perfectly. They did this all by hand. This picture is just a small scale of what they can do. It was taken at Saqusaywoman.

largest rodent in the world

This is a capabera. It is quite ugly, therefore the caiman has chosen to eat this creature. We think it may be pretty stupid too, but then what rodent isn´t?

feeding the tamarin monkies

We got to see a family of tamarins that came up close enough to us to get fed. We got a few more pictures of these guys again the following day when we ran into them on another trail.

Tambopata Nature preserve

We got to see an awesome sunset over the Madre de Dios river in the jungle.

machu picchu

We have a million pictures and not sure if this is the money shot yet. We will post the shot we think is the best when we get back to the states.

to machu picchu

Sorry for the arrangement here. Starting from the right to the left. We crossed a suspension bridge that was a little nerve racking since it had some rotten boards and loose planks. We also saw an amazing waterfall that the picture doesn´t do justice. And finally we arrived in Auga Caliente which is the town at the base of Machu Picchu. The total trek was 106 km in 4 days and then another 6 km up to MP the next day at 430 am. We were a little tired at the end of the day. The people in the left picture are: Micah, Alex (germany) Caroline (canada) Vanessa (us, but lives in London) Loni (us, school in colorado) Markus (same as Loni) and Owen (london, england). Not pictured are Becky, Luc (Caroline´s brother) and Adrian (chicago, us).

Salkantay

Hey Alex, you put a sun spot in the lower right corner! I guess that is what photoshop is for, huh? We hiked over a pass of 4650 meters (15,200 ft.) along the Salkantay route to Machu Picchu and had Salkantay mountain as a view for many hours. It stands at 6284 meters or over 20,000 ft. apparently, according to our guide, no one has tried climbing it since the 1930´s when a team of Japanese climbers all died on it. We haven´t verified this yet, but the mountain does look very intimidating since it is all loose glacier ice.

cuzco

I have a terrible connection so will not be able to post many pictures, however, here is Cuzco at night. We spent a total of 5 nights in Cuzco, and feel that we know this town pretty well, we are also tired of it and glad to be on to a new place.

On the hike up, we were treated to an amazing sunrise which was behind the mountain casting a shadow of the mountain over the valley below.